Stefan Zorian

(pseudonym of S. Arakelian). Born Sept. 4 (16), 1890, in the village of Karaklis, now the city of Kirovakan; died Oct. 14, 1967, in Yerevan. Soviet Armenian writer, academician of the Academy of Sciences of the Armenian SSR (1965).

Zor’ian’s works were first published in 1909. His first collection of stories, Gloomy People (1918), was inspired by a love for the deprived. In the novellas The President of the Revolutionary Committee (1923) and The Girl From the Library (1926), he was the first in Armenian literature to portray the fighters of the Civil War, powerful, strong-willed people devoted to the revolution. The novel White City (1930) deals with socialist transformations in a small town. Zor’ian’s autobiographical novel The Story of One Life (vols. 1–2, 1934–38) is a dramatic picture of life in prerevolutionary Transcaucasus, the story of the moral searchings of heroes who found truth in the revolution.

During the Great Patriotic War of 1941–45, Zor’ian wrote the historical novel King Pap (1944) about the Armenians’ heroic struggle against foreign aggressors in the fourth century. The novel The Amirian Family, begun in the 1930’s, was fully published in 1963. In his Book of Recollections (1958), he tells of meetings with M. Gorky, O. Tumanian, and A. Shirvanzade. Zor’ian’s writing is lyrically gentle, sincere, and laconic. He translated into Armenian L. N. Tolstoy’s War and Peace, as well as many works by I. S. Turgenev and other writers. His works have been translated into many languages. He was a deputy to the fourth, fifth, and seventh convocations of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR and was awarded the Order of Lenin, two other orders, and various medals.